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Fournier Grills Rep Adam Schiff on Protecting Hillary Clinton Before Benghazi Comm Hearings

October 18, 2015

On Sunday's Meet the Press, host Chuck Todd had two members of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, Rep. Adam Schiff (D- Calif.) and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R- Kan.), to discuss the questions that have been raised about the committee and what to expect ahead of Hillary Clinton's testimony.

National Journal's Ron Fournier accused both Congressmen of lying and asked what they could do to restore the public's trust in the committee.

Schiff said that it was too late to save the image of the committee. Fournier interrupted Schiff and asked when he and the rest of the Democrats were going to stop pretending that Clinton's personal email server was above board.

"When are you going to stop pretending that she did not compromise national security?" said Fournier.

Schiff was quick to defend Clinton.

"The secretary has been the first to admit that the use of a private server was a mistake," Schiff said.

Fournier again asked him if Clinton's private server compromised national security. Schiff spun the question around and said that it was the job Republican National Committee to go after Clinton and that the Democratic National Committee could go after Jeb Bush for his personal email use as governor of the state Florida.

Fournier asked again if Schiff felt Clinton's server violated federal policy. Schiff said that it was lawful but also a mistake but refused to say if it violated any laws.

Schiff added that the rules said that she was allowed have a private server as long as she preserved her emails and said that she did.

Clinton has said that she has turned over 55,000 pages of emails that were relevant to her time as secretary of state and deleted the rest which she had determined were personal. The FBI is conducting an investigation and has taken four servers in to federal custody to determine if her setup had put the nation's secrets at risk.